Critics of the drilling method pretend they’re at war with duplicitous, destructive oil companies. But their biggest obstacle is the Obama White House.

There are few people in America with more credibility on energy issues than MIT physical chemist John Deutch, who served in key posts in the Carter and Clinton administrations and who was asked by the White House to oversee the shale gas task force. In a 2011 Washington Post essay, he wrote that data-driven regulation of fracking’s use in oil and gas exploration would not only provide proper safeguards, it would result in “a continuous improvement in environmental outcomes.”

Deutch noted that the benefits that stood to be gained weren’t just in job creation and the economic multiplier effect. He cited the plunging costs of energy in areas where utilities suddenly had access to abundant – and far cheaper – natural gas. He described the national-security benefits of reducing reliance on natural gas imports from nations such as Russia and Iran.

His conclusion: “The emergence of the North American shale-gas resource is the most positive event in the U.S. energy outlook in 50 years.”

This is a view based on evidence – not on a quasi-religious hatred of fossil fuels. This is a view based on the gigantic success fracking has already had in creating jobs and wealth in America – not on the self-serving claims of the crony-capitalist, subsidy-craving alternative-energy industrial complex.

And then there’s this delicious irony: Allegedly evil fracking has done far more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption than the renewable sources of energy that environmentalists so admire. Such emissions hit a 20-year low in the U.S. in 2012 – because of the giant recent shift from coal to natural gas.

Which brings us back to California, home to the nation’s largest shale resource and the nation’s most fervent environmentalists. Here the question is whom our leaders will heed: the Obama administration or the green true believers.

Next Sunday, we will conclude our series on the U.S. energy revolution with a look at how another populous state with a crafty veteran Democratic governor dealt with fracking and shale, to the vast benefit of the people he was elected to serve. And we’ll lay out what the stakes are for California, depending on whether we join the revolution – or opt out.